It is well known in the art to prepare instant coffee beverages from dry mix compositions which include a particulate soluble coffee component and a particulate "creamer" or whitener component. Such compositions also may contain a sweetener component and various optional components such as bulking agents, flavors, and coloring agents. Such compositions may be of the foaming type in which case the resulting beverage may be of the cappuccino type. Foaming may be caused by including a chemical carbonation system in the composition or by utilizing a low density (gas injected) creamer, or both. Coffee whiteners utilized in such compositions may be of the dairy or non-dairy type and typically include a fat ("oil") component, and a protein component which normally includes caseinate, a carbohydrate component.
One conventional method of preparing an instant coffee beverage composition involves dry blending of a particulate instant coffee and a particulate whitener. However, the whitener tends to separate from the coffee and the components may not dissolve at the same rate. Various techniques have been proposed to overcome these drawbacks. One such proposal is to agglomerate the whitener and instant coffee. Agglomeration processes are disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,433,962; and 3,706,572.
It has also been proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,398,081 to wet-mix coffee and milk as a liquid concentrate which is dried to provide a homogeneous whitened instant coffee powder. A similar wet-mix method is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,620,733 in which milk or a milk derivative in concentrated form is mixed by wet methods with coffee followed by spray drying to form a whitened instant coffee.
A principal drawback associated with any instant coffee compositions containing caseinate or other lactic protein is that undesirable protein aggregates may appear in the reconstituted beverage. The '733 patent attempts to avoid this problem by heat treatment, both before and after concentration, in order to carry out a controlled flocculation of whey protein.
It is an object of the present invention to provide spray dried self whitening instant coffee that can be easily produced and which avoids the formation of protein aggregates in beverages prepared from the composition.